Carnivorous Butterflies - 1. Chapter 1

ONE

Philadelphia, 1986

Death finally came for me shortly after midnight one miserable December night. I thought I was ready for it, but it arrived suddenly, not like a thief, sneaking up on me, but bold and angry, like a vandal intent on smashing its way through my defences. Death, the filthy hooligan, grubby and unwashed, leaving its soiled mark over the sheets and on my bruised skin. As I lay in my childhood bed at home in Philadelphia, attended by my weeping mother and the private nurse, whose name I forget, I knew the exact time I died, because I could hear that God awful Thomas Harland grandfather clock dinging twelve times on the landing. It was the last thing I ever heard, before I passed over to the other side. As a child I always hated that ugly walnut monstrosity for waking me up every hour throughout the night. How often had I tip-toed by and stopped the pendulum, just to get a single good night’s sleep! My death was recorded as midnight, 17^th of December 1986, but of course, that’s not strictly true. I actually died on the 18^th of December, otherwise, how would I have heard the chimes, which went on for a full half minute after midnight? In any case, it was the beginning of the witching hour and a very inconvenient time at that. Most of the household had retired for the night, so my bed was hardly draped in blubbering great aunts or howling muscle Marys.

Forgive me. I am being incredibly impolite, but I’ve had so much on my mind recently. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Robert Adam Thackeray Jnr. Or just Todd to my friends. Born at the Pennsylvania Hospital, I finally succumbed to AIDS related illnesses at the ludicrously youthful age of twenty-two. Don’t feel sad. I’m not. I lived an astonishingly happy and privileged, if not slightly uneventful childhood in Philly, holidaying on Fire Island and sailing off the Hamptons on Long Island before moving to Europe at nineteen to pursue a career in acting. You see, I am already spinning this story incorrectly. In truth, it was never about acting. I actually bolted for Europe to get away from the reproachful glares and harrumphs from the East Coast society crowd. I regret I dropped out of college but will never regret falling headlong in love with London. But more on that later.

AIDS was a total bummer I must admit. Information about the virus was slow to filter through to the community and by the time we knew how it was being spread, it was too late. For me anyway. Fortunately, it was swift, giving me just enough time to say my goodbyes, to those who cared. You sure do find out who your true pals are when your body is wasting away and ravaged with lesions. Sorry — there I go again, being maudlin and boring. Sometimes it’s hard to be positive all the time. When I was alive, I was always the centre of attention. Loved by many, I seemed to attract people far and wide. Lucky me you might say! In truth, many were fair weather friends. Fortunately, the few close pals I had were extremely faithful. I guess that made my death harder to bear, for them at least. It’s irrelevant how many people you know when alive, because everyone dies alone, especially when AIDS is the cause of death. I was witness to this terribly lonely and undoubtedly companionless act. People were scared to come anywhere near me in the end. It wasn’t their fault, but you can’t blame me for feeling just a little pissed. Even my mother’s final effort at maternal care, seemed too little too late, although I was thankful when she allowed me to stroke her hand. It was much as I could manage and had she withdrawn her hand, I am certain I would have cried.

My childhood was rather unnoteworthy. In fact, it could be argued that my life really began in that mother of all cities, London, back in 1983. It was a period that had blossomed on the tail-end of flower power, when cultures collided — fashion, music, art, architecture, politics, how we loved and who we loved were not dictated by tradition, but by instinct — the rulebook was thrown from the window. Indeed, the rule book had to be rewritten. Few people back then were aware of, nor cared about, the impending storm clouds gathering on the horizon across the Atlantic in New York and San Francisco. We were young and immortal. That said, please don’t get too comfortable. The rumbling of the clouds would soon be heard. Mark my words. I am testament to that. The tempest would come, as day follows night.

My obsession with London began in my mid-teens after discovering an old, scratched vinyl record called London calling Letty, BBC, Broadcasting House, February 1957. Loretta, or Letty to her friends, is my mother. So naturally, my interest was somewhat piqued. Who was my mother? Did I really know this woman who had given birth to me? And why had a record been made for her? I discovered it purely by chance, wedged between The Everly Brothers and Bobby Rydell. The black shellac disk was heavy, like Bakelite, with a simple typewritten white label.

“Oh, put that back!” my mother insisted. It was rare for her to blush, “anyway, it’s from my past. Before I met your father, when I worked briefly for BBC Radio. Your father gets terribly jealous about all my past lovers!”

Was that a joke coming from the old battle-axe? I couldn’t imagine my staid mother, in her tweed skirts, pearls and sensible cardigan, hanging out with a bunch of groovy BBC intellectuals, let alone her having lovers, so I took the recording up to my room and played it again and again on my gramophone. Despite the scratches, the brittle voices in their clipped Queen’s English, speaking to my mom as if she was in the room with them, or in a pub drinking a half pint of ale, telling stories about their day, week, month, had me entranced. I never did find out who these people were, nor did I wish to. I enjoyed the way each person wove an imaginary story in my young impressionable mind. One spoke of travel to far off places, the other of West End plays and actors long since dead, another of Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square and Regents Street and finally, my favourite, a gravelly voiced gentleman speaking to mom about endless nights in smoke filled cafes in Soho. It was so intimate, it almost felt as if I was eavesdropping on two lovers. I was hooked.

As my teens crept towards adulthood and my roving eye started to wander towards the jocks down at the gym or on Fire Island, my desire to move to London, away from Philadelphia, became an obsession that initially worried my parents, but in time they accepted. They enrolled me into the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and with a pocket full of traveller’s cheques, sent me on my way, in the belief that I would be home by Thanksgiving. How little they knew their darling son!

Like so many American youngsters, I never looked too closely into British politics, nor its social history for that matter. I found a city criss-crossed with thousands of narrow ancient lanes and streets, so different to the ordered grid pattern of American cities. The confusion was both physical and metaphorical. I was lost. I imagined a land dominated by Duran Duran, Kajagoogoo, Spandau Ballet and Culture Club. A country where strong women prevailed, from the Queen, Margaret Thatcher and of course Princess Diana. A place where, in winter, snow fell onto architectural wonders designed by Nash and Wren and in the summer, warm crepuscular sunrays filtered through treelined country lanes that hadn’t changed since Gainsborough or Turner first gazed upon them. My naivety astonished me.

London, back then, was plagued with anti-government and anti-nuclear demonstrations, miners strikes and youth queer leftist protests, privation, hardship and rising unemployment. Still, I should explain that nothing was going to put me off. Not the recession that had destroyed the economy, nor the homeless boys scattered across Camden Town and Islington, or the bleak wet winters followed by bleak wet summers which matched the pallor of its inhabitants and their sensible clothing. Because in the end, all it took was a belief in one’s immortality, one’s ability to rise above it all and most vital, the discovery of an inner-city underbelly, arguably, more vibrant than any other place in the world. London town buzzed, despite everything. Somehow the artists thrived on poverty, awful food and ghastly weather. Here were a people resigned to fighting against a cold drizzle to get home to a supper of baked beans on toast, huddled around a gas heater death trap. The lyrics emerging from the Indy bands, the vibrant, albeit dark paintings and installations created by hungry artists, the fashions that boldly embraced a dystopian mood one moment and the power dressing attire of young yuppies the next and finally, the humour, irreverent, satirical, and breathtakingly refreshing, were all borne of a certain amount of pain and deprivation. A form of masochism that jarred against my strait-laced sunny east coast sensibilities. It excited me. I was never normal. Not in the American sense. So, it shouldn’t surprise you to know that I found myself oddly drawn to A Clockwork Orange far more than My Fair Lady, despite me being — according to some — as camp as a row of tents. Few people know this darker me, seeing as I was blessed with the face of an angel. But even Lucifer was the fairest angel of all, so don’t be too quick to assume anything.

My entire, sorry adult life was AIDS. That must seem strange to you, but it’s the truth. I never knew anything else. In those early years, everyone diagnosed would die. Just think about that. There was no hope. There was no cure. You will be dead within two years. It’s deeply, deeply shocking, and that changes you. How you cope, day by day, how you seek out the quality time that other people don’t necessarily think about. How we partied hard because we might never party again. Being diagnosed showed me that life was more important than death itself. I took drugs and got drug fucked and I caused chaos. And I make absolutely no apologies for it.

In the beginning we received no counselling from doctors. How could we when the doctors knew less than us? We gays knew more than them through the gay press, the Gay Switchboard and The Terrence Higgins Trust which distributed flyers throughout the gay venues. If anything, the advice we did receive from doctors was often hurtful and damaging. When I was told that I was HIV positive, the doctor was quite unsympathetic. He said, in a matter-of-fact way, that I was going to die within a year or two, that I was to cease any intimacy with other men immediately as I could infect others through sex, and finally, almost as an aside, he noted that I couldn’t get life insurance or a mortgage or even a job. I left the clinic stunned and frightened and suddenly, extremely lonely.

How were we to accept that? We were young and talented and had a zest for life. For me having sex with a real, living, breathing, warm man was a life enhancing experience. To have that snatched from me was hard to stomach. AIDS is a terrible thing. It was not put on earth to punish us, like so many religious groups liked to believe. It has no purpose. No agenda. It’s a freak of nature. As human beings we think we are above all that, above nature. But we are not.

We are going to die. What comes in between, is what really matters. So please allow me to take you by the hand, and show you a snapshot of that world in-between. The laughter, the love and a London that was a revelation. The good were sometimes bad and the bad were sometimes good. And lurking somewhere, in-between, was me.

As Paddington Bear once said, in London, everyone is different, and that means anyone can fit in.